Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's third beta phase delayed until June, still no official launch date

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's Director Naoki Yoshida announced Phase 3 of the MMO's beta would be delayed until "early June." At this point of time in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's development it's time, yet again, for the tough questions. Is it good that Square Enix appears to feel completely comfortable taking as much development time as necessary to get the game into condition for launch, or should player be worried about the game's continued small delays?

According to the game's beta schedule, optimally Phase 3 could have started in March -- worst case, the schedule set Phase 3 up to start in early May. Unfortunately, not only has Square Enix not met this schedule, but's seen small delays up to this point in addition to this relatively big one just announced.

Phase 3, let's be fair, is a big jump. The beta will be introducing the game to PlayStation 3 players as well as giving access to a majority of the game's early content. Up until now only a single starting city (Gridania) and three starting classes have been available. More content, more problems.

Hopefully the issue is just that Square Enix is having a tough time prepping the MMO for a beta on the PlayStation 3. After all, consoles aren't known for working well with MMOs of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's scope and structure. Or MMOs at all, for that matter. Yoshida promises open beta will, "come as soon as possible afterwards," referring to Phase 3. Our schedule says Phase 3 should take between 3-5 weeks... but the schedule hasn't been reliable yet.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn reboots the original MMO with completely new controls, gameplay, and, well... mostly everything. It's coming to PC and PS3, and will come out... eventually.

@ john I'm not typically one to get caught up in these sorts of things, and while I agree in the grand scheme of things it's a short delay, you can't describe this MMO's situation as anything other than precarious right now.

There's really no other way to put it, the original release of Final Fantasy XIV was a huge failure. Now they've rebuilt the entire thing and are dropping delays in the midst of wide-scale layoffs at Square Enix? At the bare minimum it's worrisome.

That said, what I've seen of the game is very promising, but that doesn't change the fact that things could still go very wrong here and I think it's important to make that point clear.

I'm a little bummed that I won't get to play the game for that much longer, and it's probably not helping its image at the moment, but I'm glad they're at least willing to give the game the proper time and attention it needs. The first time around they rushed to meet a deadline, and it didn't work out so well.

Besides, this is more or less the final push before what is essentially the early release phase, and they're bringing in all the big stuff. I'm probably giving SE the benefit of the doubt, but at the very least, I don't see any opportunity for more delays after this. As long as the game shows up during summer (which is apparently still the plan), I'll be happy.

If they said September, I'd still be cool with it. If I'm paying for this game monthly, I want it to be as good as it can be. So far I've been pretty pleased with my experience in beta, and if they need extra time to move it further away from 1.0 then I have no complaints.

Paladin81 Says the guy in the beta. My computer doesn't have an anywhere near good enough graphics card and isn't upgradeable and I can't afford to buy another computer so I have been waiting for 3 years to play this game at all. I would have been a legacy member if the PS3 version had been released. Anyway, this delay pisses me off even more. I love FF I love MMOs and PS3 needs a decent MMO. STOP DELAYING. Gives us extended beta 3 while you fix it. JUST LET ME IN!